


There Are Moments in the Night

by ThrillingDetectiveTales



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Band Fic, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 14:19:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10220144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales
Summary: "Your boyfriend’s here,” Billy says, just barely loud enough for Ale to hear.Ale is already sweating under the lights - a surprisingly sophisticated set-up for such a small stage, but then Tito has always loved music so it’s not a total shock that he’d want to do the best he could with what he has - but he flushes hotter anyway, stomach twisting a little.“Fuck off, cabrón,” he mutters, and Billy smirks and makes his way placidly back across the stage.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I tossed together this meme fill for a thing I was doing on Tumblr and I liked it well enough I thought I might share it here, too. Not beta-read, but hopefully still fun! 
> 
> Title is from the song 'I Heard Ramona Sing' by Frank Black which is what inspired this ficlet in the first place.
> 
> Enjoy!

The boy is back again.

Well, calling him a boy may not be totally accurate. By the measure of height alone he can’t be much younger than Ale, assuming he isn’t of an exact age. He’s still lanky in the way of all boys who haven’t quite grown into themselves, lanky like Ale is, all gazelle limbs and occasional bouts of clumsiness, though he’s broader than Ale is at the shoulder, looks a little more solidly built. 

He’s in a blue plaid flannel with a bleach stain all along one side, unbuttoned and left to drift open over the Pickwicket band tee that Ale has seen him in at least three times so far - faded and well loved, with a scrawl along the bottom that reads ‘Fuck you J’ in Emma’s familiar looping handwriting alongside a couple of thin squiggles that presumably belong to Teddy and Matt. He can picture the boy asking for their signatures, those green eyes sparking with sharp humor the way they do when the stage lights hit them, mouth tilted up in that infuriating smirk he’s always flashing at Ale from the shadowed corners of the handful of little dives that Thieves & Assassins has played over the past six months. 

While Sam drops from his range-pushing rock’n’roll holler into something closer to a croon, Billy abandons his favored post in front of Goody’s keyboard and drifts casually across the stage while he lays the main melody down. Ale turns away from the second mic, which he occasionally uses to wail a harmony along with Sam, though this part of this particular song is fairly well contained to a solitary vocal line. When Billy gets near enough, he jerks his head toward the audience and Ale follows the line of his gaze to where the boy is nursing a beer along the back wall - older than Ale, then, or with enough charm to talk his way into it despite Tito’s uncanny knack for sniffing out fake ID’s - and grinning out across the crowd of sweaty, swaying horde of twenty-somethings and townies like he’s in on some grand and dangerous secret, eyes shadowed by his dark ginger curls. 

“Your boyfriend’s here,” Billy says, just barely loud enough for Ale to hear. 

Ale is already sweating under the lights - a surprisingly sophisticated set-up for such a small stage, but then Tito has always loved music so it’s not a total shock that he’d want to do the best he could with what he has - but he flushes hotter anyway, stomach twisting a little.

“Fuck off, cabrón,” he mutters, and Billy smirks and makes his way placidly back across the stage. 

The music scene in Abernathy, Connecticut is pretty solid, which had been one of the mitigating factors in making the sudden shift from Mexico to bumfuck nowhere in the American northeast less devastating when Ale got sucked along in the riptide of his mamá’s career a few years back. There’s a rotating handful of really pretty stellar bands who take their gigs seriously, all dedicated hopefuls voraciously seeking the elusive record deal, and enough passable side-projects and hobbyists to pad the show lists at any of the dives looking to host weekend jams. 

Pickwicket are definitely the biggest in terms of notoriety, but that has a lot to do with Emma Cullen’s unbelievable magnetism and deeply aggressive stage antics, and Thieves & Assassins isn’t so far behind. It’s easily the best band that Ale has ever been a part of, even if he did come into it late, interviewing for the spot as bassist after the last guy had left the band in something of a lurch before they set off on a tiny, three-city tour. It’s not exactly sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, but they’ve got a solid EP under their belts and they’re saving up for studio space to put together a full-length album at the little recording place downtown that Sam’s cousin can cut them a deal on. Besides, Ale can’t say he’s ever had any major difficulty in finding willing bed partners when he’s in the mood, and he figures two out of three isn’t so bad, for a kid who just barely skipped past eighteen.

His mamá isn’t thrilled that Ale has no plans to go to college, but she can see how much he loves what he does and she supports him as best as she can, putting the band up at some of the B&B’s she manages for cheap when they’re not traveling far and accommodating their band practices in the guesthouse, which has been soundproofed in the years since Ale first started dragging his new friends home to dick around and play half-assed grunge.

There’s no rush that Ale has ever felt that’s quite like being on a stage, with people losing themselves in your music - and he had a fairly calamitous party phase during high school just like most of the bored kids in a town as small as Abernathy did, so he knows a number of deeply questionable highs rather intimately. He doesn’t recall seeing the boy anywhere during that time, and he’s sure he would have remembered, so he must be new in town.

Ale has always been a fan of trying new things, so after their set is over, while the assemblage whistles and cheers and Emma Cullen makes up for her belated arrival by hollering, “Fuck me gently, Sam Chisolm!” from her position atop Matt’s shoulders, Ale pushes the rolled sleeves of his black button down back up to his elbows, helps clear the stage for the next performance, loads their gear up for transportation, and then shoulders his way through the crowd toward the back wall of the bar. It isn’t especially difficult - tall as he is, people tend to make room for him, and it’s a stroke of good luck that when he makes it through the boy is still there, bottle tilted back and the long line of his throat on display while he empties the last lingering dregs of beer from it.

When he finishes, he catches Ale out of the corner of his eye and seems surprised, for a second, eyes widening barely perceptibly while one of his eyebrows twitches. He tilts that canary-fed smirk of his up and slouches back into the wall a little more, like his edges have softened under a sudden burst of midday sunshine.

“Hi,” Ale says, letting a little of his own amusement into his face. He still feels warm, like he’s baking under the stage lights, like this strange and mysterious boy is radiating heat, body all lit up electric.

“Hi,” the boy says easily, parrying Ale’s greeting. His eyes flick from Ale’s face down his body and then back up, catching on all the usual places as he goes - the creeping vines curling their way along Ale’s skin from under his sleeves, his collar; the leather cord around his neck and the little medallion therein; the long, lean sprawl of his legs in a pair of grey skinny jeans. Ale knows what he looks like and he knows how to flatter his best qualities and he isn’t disappointed by the way the boy’s eyes go a little darker, by the slight, rosy flush that bleeds into his cheeks. He licks his lips, an absent little flash of pink on pink, and continues, “You were good up there.”

“Thanks,” Ale says, and steps closer to settle against the wall alongside the boy. He offers up a hand, lets his grin go a little warmer. “Alejo Vasquez.”

The boy has one hand down by his side, bottle dangling from his fingers by the neck like a limp, dead thing, but when he meets Ale’s grip with his free hand his grasp is warm and solid and strangely gentle.

“Joshua Faraday,” he says, giving Ale’s hand a little squeeze though he makes no move to let go. “Pleasure.”

“It could be,” Ale agrees, and Joshua’s delighted grin curls a little sharper, cheeks flush a little redder, eyes go a little darker. “You new in town?”

Joshua lifts on shoulder in a noncommittal shrug. He’s still holding Ale’s hand.

“Sort of,” he says. “Spent some time here when I was real small and only just moved back.”

Ale hums, a small, thoughtful noise, and drags his thumb across Joshua’s skin. Joshua sucks a tiny breath past his teeth that scrapes sweetly against the inside of Ale’s skin, sets him to tingling. 

“You a big fan of Sacramento Gold?” Ale asks. Even if he is, Ale might be willing to forgive it for the sharp shadows his cheekbones cut into his strong jaw.

“Who?” Joshua breathes.

Ale is distantly aware of Emma heckling Sacramento Gold’s drummer, a bastard of an asshole named McCann, while he sets up his kit.

“The next band,” Ale provides. 

“What? Oh, no.” Joshua shakes his head, starts absently brushing his thumb over Ale’s knuckles. “No, not at all.”

“Good, they’re terrible,” Ale assures. He’s trying to figure out the best way to ask Joshua if he’s as interested in sucking on Ale’s tongue as Ale is in sucking in his, but Joshua beats him to the punch, for a given definition thereof.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

Ale ducks his head and huffs a laugh.

“I’m only nineteen, guero,” he provides, amused. “Besides Tito knows my mamá. No way can you buy me a drink.”

“Ah,” Joshua says, short and slightly dejected.

“You could take me for a milkshake, though,” Ale continues breezily. “There’s a diner at the end of the block that’s open late.”

“Yeah?” Joshua asks, seeming slightly bewildered but overall pleased.

“Yeah,” Ale assures. “Though if you get plain vanilla I reserve my right not to make out with you in the parking lot after.”

Joshua’s eyes are almost all pupil by now, irises bare slivers of fever-bright green.

“Lucky for us both, then,” he says with a slow, steady smirk, “that I’m a fan of chocolate.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, babes! <3


End file.
